According to a January transfer window preview from [The Athletic](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5949367/2024/11/29/manchester-united-arsenal-liverpool-transfer-latest-real-madrid/?source=emp_shared_article) — only a month away, in case the football bores you — young striker Rory Delap has caught the eye of all the big teams in the Premier League and they’re all tracking him closely at Ipswich Town (though probably for a move next summer).
Delap’s a fairly old school center forward, which presumably contributed to Manchester City willingly letting him go last summer for just £20m, but he’s scored six times already for Ipswich, which is almost exactly half of their entire attacking output so far this season.
Chelsea had been expected to make a play for a center forward in the summer, too, but we ended up signing only Barcelona youngster Marc Guiu. Perhaps we knew that Nicolas Jackson would take a solid step forward in his development, and become a rather key piece of our attack in leading the line — he has seven league goals, same as Cole Palmer, to lead the team.
Linking us with Delap seems like a fairly lazy piece of this already fairly lazy rumor, but he does tick several of our usual boxes (young, promising, ties to Manchester City, etc). Speaking of City, they retain the right to match any future bid for the 21-year-old, so there’s that, too.